


Sweet as Sugar

by LacePendragon



Series: Reposted RWBY Fics [12]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Baking, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2020-12-27 08:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21116069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacePendragon/pseuds/LacePendragon
Summary: When Penny brings home news of the bake sale the following week from school, Qrow decides to get baking. Too bad he and baking don’t exactly get along.





	Sweet as Sugar

**Author's Note:**

> Written September 2016. Reposted October 2019. It's cute, it's sweet, it'll give you cavities. Enjoy.

If there was one thing that could be said about Qrow Branwen, it was that he was one of the most competitive people you’d ever meet. Despite his shortcomings, of which there were many, he took every challenge head-on, for better or for worse, and usually came out somewhere around the top. So when his daughter, Penny, came home from school on Friday and told him about the bake sale on Monday, and how Helen Winchester was making her God is Love cookies again, Qrow rolled up his sleeves, grabbed his wallet, and set to work on gathering the supplies for a fantastic baking-filled weekend.

Of course, it would probably help if he actually knew how to bake. But that was what recipes were for, obviously.

With Penny out at Ruby and Yang’s for the weekend for a sleepover, Qrow had plenty of time to work at recipes and gather supplies for Monday. Helen’s damn cookies wouldn’t win again this year. They shouldn’t have won last year, considering Junior’s pumpkin spice cookies had been absolutely heavenly. But then Helen had to go preaching about altruism and giving back to the world and they’d given her the win just to shut her up.

Qrow wanted to punch her some days, but James told him she wasn’t worth the assault charge. Maybe slash her tires. That could be fun.

For now, however, Qrow had other things to worry about, such as trying to perfect a cookie recipe in the next two days.

Qrow squinted at the recipe, a frown marring his features, as he set-up the various ingredients on the kitchen island. This was a recipe for gingersnaps, which didn’t look horribly complicated. He didn’t want to go with chocolate chip cookies, not because they weren’t delicious, but because everyone’s mom would be making chocolate chip cookies. He had to go above and beyond if he wanted to defeat Helen’s sugary evils.

“Butter, dark molasses, brown sugar…” Qrow dug around in the grocery bags for the rest of the ingredients, double checking the recipe on his tablet again after a few seconds. He squinted at it and rubbed at his eyes. Maybe James was right, maybe he did need reading glasses. Damn.

Oh well, if James could pull them off, then so could he.

Qrow put away the rest of the groceries and dug out the measuring cups, spoons, and mixing bowls. James kept the bowls in the cupboard above the sink, and when Qrow pulled them out, the rest of the bowls and Tupperware threatened to topple out.

With a yelp, Qrow slammed the cupboard shut, grimacing when he heard all the Tupperware slam into the closed door. Slowly, he released the door. It didn’t open. He shrugged. James could deal with it later, Qrow would claim plausible deniability.

Or that Nickel had done it. That dog was always getting into something.

As if sensing Qrow’s thoughts toward her, the border collie raised her head and fixed her creepily intelligent gaze on Qrow. After a moment, she gave a quiet woof and dropped her head back onto her paws, falling asleep again at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Just for that, you’re not getting any cookies,” muttered Qrow. Nickel gave something close to a scoff and Qrow rolled his eyes. “Brat.”

He went back to baking cookies.

The first step of the recipe started with “sift”. Qrow frowned at the page. Sift? How did he sift something? Did he have a sifter? What even counted as a sifter for food?

Humming to himself, Qrow dug around the cabinets for something resembling a sifter. Then, when he realized he had no idea what a sifter even looked like, he grabbed the tablet and googled “food sifter”. When the image of the weird not-strainer popped up, Qrow frowned even harder. He _knew_ he and James had something like that, but Qrow couldn’t remember where the hell it was.

Maybe it was in the cabinet above the sink.

Qrow’s eyes trailed to said cabinet and he shuddered, remembering what laid beyond the closed doors of the cabinet. He really, really didn’t feel like getting pelted with Tupperware today. Let James handle that. Despite what James said about Qrow being thick-headed, James could definitely handle being pelted by Tupperware and mixing bowls much better than Qrow could.

After quite a bit of digging and tossing various non-glass cookware around the kitchen, Qrow finally managed to hunt down the sifter.

“Aha!” he said, holding it up in triumph. He glanced over at Nickel, who was sleeping peacefully in the entrance to the kitchen. “See? Told you I could do it.”

Nickel didn’t respond. Qrow didn’t know what he expected, she was just a dog after all. Even if she was a highly trained therapy dog.

Speaking of which, when did James stop taking her to work? It was probably a meeting day. James only took her for individual work days. Less questions that way.

Qrow turned back to the cookies, which were still no closer to being completed, and read out the first instruction again.

“Stir the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a large mixing bowl,” read Qrow. He tapped the sifter against his chin and frowned. “What, all at once?” He eyed the sifter. It didn’t _look_ big enough for everything, but if the instructions said that was how you did it, then that was probably how you did it.

Qrow shrugged and balanced the sifter on the big metal mixing bowl. Then, he grabbed the measuring cups and started measuring out the various dry ingredients. One by one he dropped the dry ingredients into the sifter, watching as it piled higher and higher.

“One tablespoon ginger and two teaspoons of baking soda,” said Qrow to himself. He snagged the teaspoon and dumped two full spoons of baking soda into the mixture. After a moment, he double checked the spoon and cursed quietly.

It was the tablespoon.

“Maybe if I add extra ginger,” muttered Qrow. He’d already added everything else except the ginger and the salt, it’d be a huge waste to just dump it out, wouldn’t it?

Qrow grabbed the one eighth cup and filled it full of ground ginger, then dumped it on top of the rest of the dry ingredients in the sifter.

All that was left was the salt, and Qrow added just a pinch. Then, he went back and added an entire teaspoon, because if he already had extra ginger and baking soda, extra salt was probably a good idea too. Or something.

Qrow started sifting into the large bowl, shaking the sifter slowly as he tried not to spill anything. When that failed, he shrugged and shifted fast, eager to be done and rest his damn wrists. Why were a bunch of dry ingredients so heavy?

Once he was finished, Qrow realized that he had to sift it _again_ and sighed before doing so.

The rest of the steps went relatively smoothly – he used a fork to beat the butter, before realizing he _had_ a whisk, then accidentally dumped the entire dry mixture in at once, instead of a little at a time, but it worked out – until he reached the end and realized he was supposed to have preheated his oven before all this.

Sighing, Qrow flicked on the oven to the recommended 375 degrees and waited. And waited. And waited _some more._

When about five minutes had passed and the oven still wasn’t preheated, Qrow cranked it up as high as it went and tossed both cookie sheets in. Surely the preheating heat would bake the cookies, right?

Ten minutes later, with smoke billowing out of the oven and the smoke detector going crazy, Qrow ran from the kitchen to throw open all the windows. He tripped over Nickel on the way out of the kitchen and face-plated into the hardwood. Nickel’s whine and the ringing in Qrow’s ears blared alongside the smoke detector.

Qrow shoved himself to his feet, grimacing at the blood pouring from his nose, and cursed again as he threw open all the windows on the first floor and bled all over his shirt and apron.

After a minute, the smoke detector stopped, and Qrow limped into the downstairs bathroom to clean off his face and shove tissues up his nose.

He peeled off his shirt, grimacing at the blood, and dumped it into a sink full of cold water alongside the apron. Then, he headed upstairs to grab another shirt, back downstairs to throw away the tissues, and then into the kitchen to survey the disaster zone it had become.

The cookies were tiny black hockey pucks in the centre of the cookie sheet – completely unsalvageable. Qrow grimaced at the burnt cookie sheet. He’d probably destroyed it too. Damn it.

With a sigh, Qrow threw out everything, turned off the oven, and dumped all the dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

“Okay,” said Qrow, leaning against the counter with his fingers curled over the edge. “You won’t beat me, kitchen,” muttered Qrow. He shoved off the counter and centered himself. He would make these damn cookies if it was the last thing he did.

He turned around and reached above the sink to grab more mixing bowls. As he opened the cupboards, he remembered why that was a terrible idea, and all the Tupperware came crashing down around him. Qrow stumbled back as he was pelted with plastic, throwing his arms over his head and shouting as the other metal mixing bowls banged into him.

He dropped to the kitchen tiles on his knees, rubbing at his head. He’d be bruised tomorrow.

Distantly, he heard the sound of the door opening and Nickel getting to her feet. She bounded off toward the front door, her nails clicking on the hardwood.

“Qrow?” James’ voice floated down to Qrow. “Where are you?”

“Kitchen!” called Qrow. He grimaced as the words bounced around in his head, reverberating until he couldn’t hear himself think, let along anything else James said. Ugh. Either the Tupperware avalanche gave him a concussion or else tripping over Nickel had.

Somehow, Qrow thought it was more likely the latter than the former. Damn dog.

James stepped into view in the kitchen entrance, Nickel at his heels, and Qrow looked up at his husband with a tiny, pitiful smile. James, to his credit, looked somewhere between amused and confused, rather than outright horrified, which Qrow probably would have, in his place.

“What… are you doing?” asked James, the brief hesitation in his voice betraying more confusion than his expression. He raised an eyebrow at Qrow, his blue eyes slightly amused.

“Baking,” said Qrow. He went to stand and slipped on Tupperware, whacking his elbow on the tiled floor. Pain danced up his elbow and sent tiny stars in his vision. When his vision cleared, he found himself staring at James’ hand, which rested in front of his face.

“Here, let me help,” said James. Qrow took the hand gratefully and allowed James to pull him to his feet. Once there, Qrow surveyed the kitchen disaster zone.

He thought he’d cleaned up, but looking over the splatters on the backsplash, the still slightly smoking oven, and the overloaded dishwasher that smelled strongly of baking soda and ginger, Qrow realized he had probably just been blind to his own mess. Combined with the literal floor full of Tupperware and mixing bowls, the kitchen had certainly seen better days.

“Why were you baking?” asked James, looking over the kitchen. With every passing second, his expression grew more and more haunted, until Qrow swore he saw the hope for humanity leave James’ eyes. “You’re a terrible cook.”

“Penny’s school is having a bake sale on Monday,” said Qrow, shrugging. “And I knew you were busy this weekend, so I thought I’d do some of the baking myself.” He grimaced again and rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t realize that it was so hard, or I probably would have called Junior for help.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Not me?”

Qrow shrugged again. “Didn’t want to look inadequate.”

James sighed and surveyed the kitchen again, lips pressed together. “You’re good at many things, Qrow, but baking and cooking aren’t any of them.” He looked to Qrow, eyes soft. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re good at plenty of things I’m hopeless at, just as I am with you.” He clapped Qrow on the shoulder. “Now, what do you say we clean up this mess and bake something together.”

Qrow went up on his toes and pecked James on the lips, smiling as he pulled back. “Sounds good to me.”

Together, the two set to work on cleaning up the kitchen, and this time, they stacked the Tupperware properly so that it didn’t go everywhere when you opened the cupboard. Half an hour later, when the cookies had baked, they were sweet as could be, and Qrow was glad James had come home early that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated!


End file.
